Painted in 1944, in this work Lowry has combined a depiction of industrial England with the train crossing the viaduct and smoking chimneys beyond, with a figurative scene of children playing in the foreground.
The main subject of this painting is the Pack Saddle or Roving Bridge which spans the Manchester, Bolton and Bury canal, where it is joined by the Fletcher Canal in Clifton.
This bridge seems to symbolise the lonely and isolated, a constant theme in Lowry's work. Here it spans the canal which was for a brief period the arterial network of Britains industry. Instead, by the date that this work was painted, the canal as a form of transport had been superseded by the railway network.